


What Crazy Sounds Like

by autoschediastic



Category: The Following
Genre: 1.06 coda, Canon Character of Color, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoschediastic/pseuds/autoschediastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jacob can kill now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Crazy Sounds Like

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ponderosa121 (Ponderosa)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ponderosa/gifts).



The phone goes black and Paul grunts, "No hospital."

Adrenaline and an easy, calm sort of rage fill up the blank emptiness in Jacob's gut. He turns the truck on and checks to make sure the way is clear before pulling back onto the road.

"I said no hospital," Paul grits out, the last of it a hiss as he twists in the seat, trying to sit up. He reaches for the wheel.

"He stabbed you," Jacob says, batting Paul's hand aside like waving away a fly. "You're bleeding out."

"No," Paul wheezes, "no hospital." He struggles to keep his eyes open, his hand fallen limp near Jacob's thigh. "Prison, not going to prison. Not gonna be, not like--"

"Just like Joe," Jacob finishes, and keeps his eyes on the road.

*

Paul wakes with a start and a noise like a kicked dog. His arm, hanging limp near Jacob's waist, goes tight, fingers clawed into Jacob's sweater. Panic sits bright in his feverish eyes. "No," he groans, struggling weakly as Jacob hauls him out of the seat, "I-- Fuck, I told you--"

"Shut up," Jacob snaps, grateful when the jolt of Paul's feet hitting asphalt does the job. He shoulders Paul's weight and unsteadily knees the door shut. His skin prickles where tacky blood drags against it. Like static electricity, a low-grade current.

He doesn't realise he's still standing in the motel's back parking lot in broad daylight until Paul coughs a laugh and says, "Told you I'm too pretty for prison."

A laugh catches in the back of Jacob's throat. Catches and burns. Paul glances up, sweat-slick and grey beneath the blood dried on his face, lip white where it's caught between his teeth. When he laughs, it's a wet, wracking tear. The fresh hot rush against Jacob's belly shouldn't make him laugh in return, but he does.

"So this is what crazy sounds like," mutters Jacob, prompting another burbling cough from Paul, almost a giggle, and he fumbles with the room keys, getting them both inside and Paul laid out on the bed before he goes back to flip the deadbolt and draw the chain across the door, make sure the curtains are closed. He took too long getting in here. Someone could know where they are.

"You need to do it," Paul says.

Jacob keeps his back turned, peering out into the lot. It looks empty. So did the farm.

"Jacob," Paul grits out, short-tempered, annoyed; familiar. Except for the pain laced through it.

Paul would've killed that guy, the one they jacked for the truck. Jacob hit him pretty hard--really hard--so maybe he's dead already. Either way, the cops are gonna figure it out.

"You gotta go back out," Paul says, weak and insistent. "The truck, you gotta--"

Jacob drops the curtain and turns around. The room's darker than outside. Paul's barely a shadow.

"Stinks like fish," Paul wheezes, "guy fishes, he's got line. Stitch me up."

"With what, a fishhook?" Jacob asks.

Paul shrugs. "If you can't find a needle."

Jacob opens his mouth, shuts it again, scrubs his hands (blood still under the nails; the desk clerk barely looked at him, just the money) over his face. Paul sucks in a ragged breath. Before he can start yelling, Jacob unbolts the door.

The truck's got a tackle box, bottled water, blankets that smell like dirt and half a first-aid kit filled with crumpled band-aid wrappers, septic wipes and gauze yellowed by time. He takes it all. In the room, Paul's turned on a lamp, leaving the gaping, bloodied hole in his shirt looking harsh in the warm yellow glow.

"Get towels," Paul says, and, "Take off the lampshade," and a dozen other orders that Jacob obeys without thought. Paul takes his phone and googles how-to videos on wound sutures, and Jacob doesn't bother to say he already knows. They all played with knives, someone had to learn.

"Okay," Paul says, forcing his breaths deep and even just like the movies, "ready, go."

There's a lot more blood around the edges of Paul's wound than on the neat, clean slices of pig's skin he practiced on years ago for his certification. A fishhook and thimble aren't a needle and a push. But the hook's single-barbed, sterilized and sharp, and he's careful when he sets it about a quarter inch away from gaping skin.

Paul's breathing sharpens. "Come on," he says, tilting his head back, eyes closed as he inhales, exhales. The nervous flutter of his lashes slowly eases. His mouth looks cracked and dry, pale next to the dark scatter of stubble around it. He says, “Do it,” and goes still, breath held. 

_Do it_ , Paul's head bowed, his back gleaming with sweat, covered in blood-speckled marks from Jacob's nails, muscles tight and straining as he waited for the push. It might've been a dare. It might've been something they had to do, like this.

It might've been, Jacob thinks, and pushes the hook firmly into flesh.

"Fuck," Paul spits. He grabs at the sheets, white-knuckled, twists them tightly around his fist as Jacob pushes deeper, drags the line through. "Fuck, be careful."

Jacob doesn't say, _I am_ , but asks, "Does it hurt more than the knife?" as the hook sinks through the other side and he pulls, drawing the wound's edges gently together.

There's a hitch in Paul's laboured breaths, like a kick in his pulse. Blood flows warm over Jacob's fingers, slick and slippery, so he leaves the hook poised for the second stitch while Paul nudges a torn strip of towel closer to absorb it.

"Yeah," Paul finally says, "yes," and Jacob hesitates, wondering if he'll have to ask. Paul licks his lips. "The knife came out," he says, "I know that hook's going back in."

"Yeah," Jacob echoes, wetting his own dry lips, and pushes in again.

Paul cringes. "God, you'd think--" and he shies away again, shaking his head and muttering he's sorry, he's not trying to mess Jacob up. Jacob watches metal sink into flesh, listens to the sound of it in Paul's voice as he says, "You'd think you'd get used to it, right? Like it wouldn't be new every time," and understanding doesn't so much hit as it rises up like a slow, creeping tide.

Jacob says, voice thick, "This is what it's like for them."

Brow pinched, Paul nods. He breathes in through his nose, nostrils flared, and out through his mouth, steady and even until Jacob ruins his rhythm. It's distracting. It makes Jacob's hand slip; the barb sticks. Paul howls.

"Shit, fuck, I'm sorry," Jacob says, grabbing onto Paul's hips to force him back down, hold him there. The line, caught under Jacob's knee, pulls sharply and the hook jerks, driven too deep. "Paul, stay down!"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Paul chants, " _fuck_ ," his sweat running rivulets through the blood.

"You're losing too much blood," Jacob says, hands shaking as he tries to wipe the hook clean so he can get a grip on it again. "It looks like--” He scrubs his mouth dry on the back of his wrist. “You would’ve bled out by now if he hit something vital, but you’ll need antibiotics. I should take you to the hospital."

Paul barks a laugh. "Sure, just when you're getting into it."

"I'm not," Jacob says, not sure why he's smiling, but through the grime, Paul's smiling back at him, and this is crazy, so that makes it okay. Crazy like a kiss on a dare, like fumbling beneath crisp sheets that still smell like the packaging. "Shut up and keep still, I'm not."

Paul snorts, "Whatever," but he settles down. The muscles in his belly jump when Jacob touches the hook and he mutters, "Whatever," again, under his breath.

One more stitch, then another. Jacob pauses to make sure they're not too tight or too loose; this would be easier if he could stitch and tie each one off as he goes, but the hook is clumsy and the line difficult to guide. The next goes in crooked. On autopilot, he starts to back the hook out, and it isn't until Paul whines, high and hurt, that he remembers the barb.

"Just, just hang on," he says, and keeps his eyes on the hook, not the taut line of Paul's throat. Pressing his fingers around the hook, framing it, he draws back slowly, trying to focus on the pull on the barb and not the way Paul's fingers twist in the towel, or Paul's knee drawing up like he can't help it, the pain has to go somewhere. The sensation of flesh around metal changes as Paul's voice rises and Jacob quickly pushes the hook back through, out and in and out again before Paul makes it to a full scream.

"It's okay," Paul gasps, and Jacob doesn't think he realises how much he's trembling, or how red the towels are, "m'good, keep going," or that Jacob's heard that voice before and those words spoken in it. The metal tinge of fresh blood is stronger than the smell of their sweat this time around, but it's the same.

He shouldn't want to keep going now, either, but he does. If he doesn't--

Poised to begin again, Jacob stops. If he doesn't.

"This is what it's like," he says, not to Paul. Just to say it, to hear it said. _This is what it's like_. And it would be so easy. He wouldn't have to do anything except wait.

He looks at Paul, his hands red with blood, and thinks, _I could kill you_.

On its heels follows a rush like nothing he's ever felt. Terrifying, thrilling, like being born, noise and light and a sharp, sudden awareness. Paul stares back at him, weak and weary and wholly his in a way Paul's never been anyone's before. Or ever be again, if Jacob wanted.

Jacob traces the shallow planes of muscle on Paul's ruined belly and thinks about the difference between all that strength brought to bear against him, of Paul's weight pinning him to the sheets, and his hand enough now to keep Paul down. He takes his hand away, waiting for the surge of realisation to hit, for Paul to fight and scream and run. Long seconds pass. When Jacob finally lifts his gaze to meet Paul's, nothing's changed in it.

Swallowing hard, Jacob says, "Try not to squirm," and readies the hook for another pass.

*

When the bloodied coverlet is crammed into a corner and the sheets are pulled back, cool and soft against bare skin where Paul is feverish and sticky, and the television for once tuned to something other than the news, Paul drifts in an out of a fitful doze. Jacob watches the unsteady rise and fall of his chest more than the stupid reality show on the screen.

Once, Paul wakes long enough to rasp, "I know what you're thinking."

Already reaching for some water, Jacob says, "Yeah?" his gaze on the pull of Paul's stitches. They're holding well and the wound doesn't gape. If infection doesn’t set in, it’s still going to leave a hell of a scar.

"Yeah," Paul says, his eyes still closed and mouth smug. "You can do it now. I saw it." He lets out a hurt noise as he shifts, then a satisfied one as he resettles against Jacob’s side. “Bitch is gonna be so fucking pissed you didn’t need her.”

"Just drink that," Jacob says, pushing the bottle into Paul's hand.

"When I'm better," Paul says, and drinks, his head heavy on Jacob's shoulder. "We'll find someone for you when I'm better." He tips the bottle up again and then lets it list, fingers loose around the base. "Just for you."

"Sure, whatever," Jacob says, and pushes the blanket back to let some cooler air in. In the flickering light, Paul's wound is like a bruise, like fingers dug in deep. "Just for me."


End file.
